Word: nam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...years since Viet Nam, critics in and out of uniform have repeatedly charged that too many officers have become cautious bureaucrats, adept at Pentagon politics perhaps, but interested more in advancing their careers than in preparing for the brutal exigencies of combat. In an era of unconventional warfare and low-level guerrilla struggles, military reformers sometimes fear that a rigid military-academy mind-set is geared to yesterday's wars of attrition. They question whether West Point is turning out the kind of officers that the nation needs...
...year-old academy, which is enjoying a resurgence of popular support and of internal morale, has few doubts about its modern role. During the Viet Nam War, West Point was so unpopular that it was unable to fill its class of '72 with qualified applicants. Last year, at a time of renewed patriotism, it received 12,644 applications for some 1,400 places. Although only 12% of newly commissioned U.S. Army lieutenants are West Pointers, 37% of the Army's generals once wore cadet gray. The academy sets the tone for the officer corps; it regards itself as a repository...
...values cherished by West Point sometimes get twisted or lost on the battlefield. In Viet Nam, the questionable enemy "body counts" served up by senior military leaders--many of them academy graduates--"cut right against the integrity we were taught at West Point," concedes General Palmer, a deputy commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam. (His much criticized superior, General William Westmoreland, '36, was a cadet first captain and later superintendent of the academy.) The Viet Nam War is an awkward subject at West Point. In class, cadets are taught that the military leadership was not blameless, but most subscribe...
Although some child-safety advocates once claimed that 50,000 children a year are abducted by people they do not know, the FBI investigated just 68 kidnaping cases last year involving children. Says an FBI spokesman: "We lost 50,000 troops in Viet Nam over a ten-year period. Everybody knows someone who was killed. How many of us know someone who has had a child abducted...
Certainly I agree with you that we must preserve a sense of proportion and not panic over the spread of AIDS [WORLD, Oct. 28]. After all, American aid has caused far more deaths in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and no remedy has yet been found for this disease, in spite of efforts in Congress. Graham Greene Antibes, France Middle-Aged...